A Benediction: I Hope For You

I hope, my friends, this year has been good for you. 
Not perfect. Not hashtag blessed. Not even fantastic. 
No need to glance at all the glossy appeal the highlight reels might give us. Instead, may we gaze around, and in, the interior of our real lives we live one quiet day after another.
As we reflect back, I hope laughter lingers in your memory. 
I hope courage kept you company.
I hope lament laid open the way for moving slowly through the aching angst and haunting grief come to call.
I hope your brokenness was held by the beauty of one who could sit and stay, who could bear witness to the wild ache, the washed away dream.
I hope you sang and danced.
I hope music poured from Spotify, from speakers, from instruments, from your diaphragm. 
I hope you delighted.
I hope you found holy the sacred practice of noticing.
I hope you discovered again and again small, hidden wonders to delight in.
I hope you welcomed your emotions, silenced the shame when it showed with the intention to silence you, and found the boundaries you needed to set you free.
I hope you embraced your body in which you live and move and have your being.
I hope you texted friends and chatted over coffee. 
I hope the diagnoses were all favorable, yet I further know life doesn’t dole out only aces all the time. But still, I hope, as you turned the cards one by one, you found a royal flush.
I hope on those incredibly hard days, the weary ones when simply the act of choosing to get out of bed was thriving, your phone buzzed and a friend said, “I’m grateful for you and I wanted you to know.”
I hope you hugged your people. 
I hope you apologized when needed and heard “I’m sorry” when someone you love lived out a crabby day.
I hope your compassion and empathy was the catalyst of inspiration your neighbor needed that Tuesday. 
I hope trusting your intuition became a little more second nature. 
I hope you read, long into the night, on more than one occasion. 
I hope life-giving moments found you exactly when you needed them, my introvert friends and my extrovert friends. 
Oh, and friends, I sure hope your year held bouquets of fresh flowers or some equivalent something to bring beauty and glory to your days.
I hope you ate chocolate cake. With milk. And no one to judge you. And you savored every crumb.
I hope there was pizza and fresh raspberries and mashed potatoes and sweet corn on the grill. I hope you had hummus and stayed too long exchanging confidences around a bowl of chips and queso.
I hope HOPE held a champagne flute high and toasted you across the tabletop and charcuterie.
I hope simplicity sat with you and peace permeated your pathway.
I hope you learned to live just a bit more, to understand a little better the tension of living in a both/and world.
I hope grace lit your way like a lantern aloft and steadfastness radiated around you.
I hope you heard His whisper to “Live Loved.”
I hope, I hope, you began to believe, “You are one in whom Christ dwells and delights.”